Dole Decries History Standards for Dwelling on the Negative

Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, the leading candidate for the 1996
Republican presidential nomination, last week attacked the voluntary
national history standards in a speech designed to appeal to his
party's conservative wing.

Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley responded with criticisms of
his own, seeking to distance the Clinton administration from the
history standards, which received federal funding under President
Bush.

Sen. Dole also criticized affirmative action and bilingual education
in his speech to members of the American Legion, who were meeting in
Indianapolis. He called for establishing English as the nation's
official language and eliminating programs in which children are taught
in their native tongues.

Along with the history standards, these are examples of policies
promulgated by "liberal, academic elites" to assuage their "elitist
guilt," the Kansas Republican said.

"The purpose of the national history standards seems not to be to
teach our children certain essential facts about our history, but to
denigrate America's story while sanitizing and glorifying other
cultures," Mr. Dole said. "This is wrong, and it threatens us as surely
as any foreign power ever has."

Mr. Riley issued a strong statement terming the history standards "a
setback and a disappointment."

'Not Our Standards'

Later in the week, a luncheon guest asked Mr. Riley to comment on
Sen. Dole's remarks after the secretary gave a back-to-school speech at
the National Press Club.

"They portray American history in a bad light, and that is a
mistake," Mr. Riley said.

"Those aren't our standards," he added. "We had nothing to do with
them."

A spokeswoman for the Department of Education said that Mr. Riley
had criticized the history standards in the past. But such remarks have
not been widely reported in the media, and he had not issued a formal
statement prior to last week.

"He's just making the point because numerous Republicans are saying
this is a Clinton administration action," Kerrie Morgan said. "He's
making the point that ... we didn't have anything to do with them."

The history standards have been widely criticized, especially by
conservatives, since their release last year.

Other GOP presidential contenders--commentator Patrick J. Buchanan
and Lamar Alexander, the former Secretary of Education--had already
joined in.

Indeed, Mr. Dole's high-profile, Labor Day speech echoed specific
criticisms that had been raised by Mr. Alexander; another former
secretary of education, William J. Bennett; and Lynne V. Cheney, the
former chairwoman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, who had
initially championed the standards project.

English Only

Mr. Dole was also jumping on a moving bandwagon in criticizing
bilingual programs at a time when anti-immigrant sentiment appears to
be growing, and one of his rivals, California Gov. Pete Wilson, has
made curbing services for illegal immigrants a cornerstone of his
campaign.

U.S. English, a group that advocates making English the nation's
official language, noted in a statement that Mr. Wilson, Mr. Buchanan,
and another GOP presidential candidate, Sen. Richard G. Lugar, R-Ind.,
have endorsed the idea.

President Clinton, while governor of Arkansas, signed legislation
making English the official language in that state but has not
supported any such initiative on the national level.

"We must stop the practice of multilingual education as a means of
instilling ethnic pride, or as a therapy for low self-esteem, or out of
elitist guilt over a culture built on the traditions of the West," Mr.
Dole said last week.

James J. Lyons, the executive director of the National Association
for Bilingual Education, said the remarks were "part and parcel of a
xenophobic foray."

"These are perilous times for the [federal bilingual] program," Mr.
Lyons said, "and more importantly, for kids."

Revisions Under Way

But Mr. Dole reserved most of his criticism for the history
standards, which he said "suggest we teach our students about America
by concentrating on some of our worst moments: the scourge of
McCarthyism and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan."

He said the standards document neglects to mention that George
Washington was the first president; does not mention such figures as
Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, and Paul Revere; and first
mentions the U.S. Constitution as a vehicle used to maintain
slavery.

"After years of that, would you love America?" Mr. Dole asked.

Supporters of the standards contend that the chorus of critics Mr.
Dole has joined has, in many cases, misrepresented the document.

For example, in addition to suggesting that 7th and 8th graders be
able to discuss "the slavery compromises" involved in securing approval
for the Constitution, the standards include a thorough discussion of
the factors and process leading to the creation and ratification of the
Constitution.

The Council for Basic Education, a private Washington-based group,
has convened two groups of scholars and historians to make
recommendations for revision of the proposed world and U.S. history
standards.

The report from those groups is expected next month. (See Education
Week, June 21, 1995.)

The Education Department and the National Endowment for the
Humanities provided $1.6 million in 1992 to help pay for developing
them.

The federal government has also contributed to other such
projects.

Educators are developing voluntary national standards in 12
subject-matter areas.

Superficial Treatment?

Some observers expressed concern last week that the movement to
improve schools by raising standards could be imperiled if standards
are made a political issue by candidates who address such an effort on
only a superficial level.

"What concerns me is the idea of standards becomes kind of a
negative concept," said Diane Ravitch, a visiting scholar at the
Brookings Institution who served as an Education Department official
under President Bush and who is among the scholars convened by the
CBE.

"I'd like to see a more substantive discussion at the national
level," said Ms. Ravitch, who supports the idea of voluntary academic
standards but has been critical of some parts of the history standards.
"It's not a simple topic, and sound bites on various sides are
unsatisfying and often wrong."

Although Mr. Riley sought to distance his department from the
standards, another top official said in an interview earlier in the
week that Mr. Dole's comments unfairly discounted the long effort by
many states to set content standards for their schools.

"I think it was kind of a cheap shot," said Marshall S. Smith, the
undersecretary of education. "I was hoping somebody was going to ask
him if he read the history standards."

"I hope he doesn't generalize it to all of the standards," Mr. Smith
added. "There are some states that are beginning to develop some strong
standards leading to increased academic rigor."

Jeanne Allen, the president of the Washington-based Center for
Education Reform, said she agrees with Mr. Dole's criticisms of the
history standards. But she complained that he did not offer any
alternatives.

"It's good that he raised this issue, but he didn't go far enough,"
she said. "Here's the problem, but what's the solution?"

Kristi Hamrick, a spokeswoman for the Family Research Council, a
conservative Washington think tank, praised Mr. Dole and argued that
themes like academic standards, bilingual education, and affirmative
action are "very sustainable over the course of a campaign."

Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas spent part of his Labor
Day holiday last week speaking to the national convention of the
American Legion in Indianapolis. The Republican presidential candidate
criticized proposed national standards for U.S. history and spoke of
the need to teach English to all immigrant children. Following are
excerpts from his speech:

On U.S. history standards:

"There have been dark moments in our past. There are still cruel
elements in our culture. We should not sanitize them when we teach our
children the history of America and Western civilization. But we should
not politicize them, either, as too many educators and professors in
our schools and universities today are attempting to do. There is a
shocking campaign afoot among educators at all levels--most evident in
the national history standards already distributed to more than 20,000
teachers, administrators, and professors--to disparage America and
disown the ideas and traditions of the West."

"The purpose of the national history standards seems not to be to
teach our children certain facts about our history, but to denigrate
America's story while sanitizing and glorifying other cultures. This is
wrong, and it threatens us as surely as any foreign power ever
has."

On language education:

"If one of the most important missions of our schools is to make
citizens of our children, and I believe that it is, fluency in English
should be a central educational goal of every state in our nation."

"Yes, schools should provide the language classes our immigrants and
their families need, as long as their purpose is the teaching of
English. We have done this since our founding to speed the melting of
our melting pot. But we must stop the practice of multilingual
education as a means of instilling ethnic pride, or as a therapy for
low self-esteem or out of elitist guilt over a culture built on the
traditions of the West."

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